The Risks of Creativity

When you’re the one calling the shots, there is tremendous freedom to be creative and daring. I think that is one of the ultimate drivers that compel entrepreneurs to forge their own way into new businesses.

There is also the downside risk: that one may be too bold and thus perceived as crazy or bizarre.  Depending on the medium, this risk/reward can be even more pronounced when one is trying to distinguish oneself in a “standardized” profession, such as residential real estate.

For me, as President of Partners Trust, I have no shortage of ideas and creativity, as well as the platform to put these ideas on their feet.  Believe me, when I and my fellow partners get together, we air it out pretty good. And because each person’s ideas and creativity is met with only encouragement, it creates a very safe haven to toss around ideas for the betterment of our company.

Here’s what our “brain trust” is cooking-up currently:

though it becomes clearer that print media will soon be an antiquated method of exposing properties, most consumers are still not quite willing to abandon ship. In other words, Angelenos still like to read an actual newspaper or magazine every now and then.  Therefore, though our company has created some of the finest online exposure strategies to expose and sell property, we will also do some print media for those who enjoy things “old-school.”

That being said, we’ve come up with an envelope-stretcher that we’re going to put on its feet in the coming weeks:

in the spirit of honoring what has been the stalwart of any past marketing campaign — we’ve come up with a design to capture our customers’ attention in a time-honored tradition, using one of newspaper’s own tried and true features… cartoon characters.

Yes, you heard me. Cartoon characters.

Hey, the way we see it, if it worked for all of us growing up to have characters offer up humor, why not use them as a vehicle to educate our clients about what we offer?

The risk: no one has done it before and because of this fact, if we roll it out, will it undermine our sincere desire to come across as a reputable firm that sells multi-million dollar homes?

Well, in the final analysis, we won’t know until we give it a shot. Fortunately, our clientele is pretty savvy, and we give them credit for having sharp minds and a playful sense of humor.

So, here’s to creativity and courage. We invite you to check out our Saturday advertisements in the LA Times and see if indeed we’ve lost our marbles or we’re on to something. All comments welcome!